CARROT was tasked by The Nature Conservancy with creating a digital experience to reawaken an undeniable love and appreciation for elephants existing in the hearts of our millennial audience and to inspire social action. To stand apart from campaigns that call upon scare tactics and doom and gloom, we created a destination that acted as a rallying cry to #SaveElephants. Filled with the facts, elegant images of elephants, and with sharable content throughout the experience, we asked millennials to join our herd and get involved in the conversation for the long haul.
The hub on TNC's website, encouraged millennials to learn more about the issue, the majesty of the 430,000 living elephants, and TNC's 360 approach to saving the species. We provided custom-designed, shareable content to allow people to help spread our message, with the ultimate goal being e-mail opt-ins from those seeking to stay informed about opportunities to help in the future. In order to reach our audience, we launched TNC Africa on Instagram (@nature_africa) and populated their account with custom designs with the #SaveElephants message.
The campaign also involved a strategic partnership with Martin Guitar. Running in parallel to the awareness campaign, the company auctioned off similarly branded items (such as a guitar with frets designed by Carrot), and called upon their community of artists to drive buzz around the issue. Using a consistent, bright and hopeful tone across our site, social content and partner content, we're spreading a vital message: With your help, there is hope for elephants.
Our designs were inspired by the kanga garments and colorful beaded necklaces worn in the African Great Lakes region. The site features sharable hand-lettering, custom animations, photography from TNC, hand sketched doodles and icons. Due to the modular nature of the site, we integrated thoughtful transitions from one section to the next; for instance, through parallax scrolling we see tiny elephants transition to ivory rings where text explains the need to reduce international demand for the material.
This project utilized Roots, Carrot's open source, static, front-end system that allows for quick and intuitive builds. We also wrote a library called Skrilla to build complex animations, while maintaining modularity and flexibility, and restack elements easily. We also rebuilt our custom share button to support IE8, allowing #ShareElephants to reach all browsers. And, of course, the site is fully optimized for mobile and tablet.
Additionally, Paul McCartney signed a Martin D-28 left-handed guitar, which was put up for auction and raised an astonishing $50,000 within minutes. Bidding began in the morning on eBay with a starting bid of $10,000 and quickly reached the impressive final amount in no time.
The #SaveElephants message is permeating the social web. The message, built for longevity, will allow TNC to continue to address this crisis through years to comes. The campaign, thus far, has generated over 6,000 new supporters in the first 4 months.
